Clean Clothes, Dirty Thoughts
by TeacupOctopusTopHat
Summary: Tohru is finishing up some laundry one morning and unknowingly drops a particular article of clothing in the hallway. Right on the floor between the boys’ rooms. What could happen? (This takes place early on in the series)


Welcome! Thought I'd try a new fic with a bit of comedy and a little slice of life. This is a sneak peek earlier on in the series just exploring how Tohru and the Sohma boys may have encountered any awkward situations when she moved in with them. Enjoy!

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It was a fine Saturday morning, indeed. The forest around Shigure's house brimmed with life, though it was masked by the thick canopy of trees. The leaves above glistened in the early sunlight of the day. Below, squirrels scampered across the grassy earth, bees buzzed amongst the blossoming flowers and birds swooped from one tree branch to another, pausing momentarily to sing an instinctual tune.

Within the house, someone was also singing. Tohru Honda was tossing wet clothes from the washing machine into a large woven basket. As she did so, she sang lightly, letting her own tune drift into the air. Her song carried on in a carefree manner; at times she casually departed from the true melody to improvise a string of notes she just made up in the moment. She enjoyed getting up early on the weekend to do the laundry for the whole house since there was quite a bit to go through. She didn't mind though; she claimed it was a relaxing start to her weekend.

Closing the washer's door with a swing of her hip, she took the basket up by the handles. The load groaned as she lifted it, the material stretching under the hefty weight. Making her way upstairs to her room, she continued her little song which only seemed to perpetuate her usual happy mood. When she got to the second floor, she adjusted her grip; the basket was just heavy enough to potentially teeter her off-balance. She was getting stronger from her Sohma household labors, but the basket was larger and bulkier than her. Tohru didn't notice the shift of the clothes as something fell out of the basket, and remained oblivious to the sound of it hitting the ground because she was still singing. She closed the door behind her as she went to the balcony at the end of the second floor hallway, where she usually hung up the freshly laundered clothes on a thin laundry line.

The aforementioned article of clothing lay abandoned in the middle of the hallway, in between the rooms of two unsuspecting young men, who happened to not quite get along.

As if on cue, one boy opened his door, about to make his way downstairs to the bathroom. He was scratching his cheek when he noticed the obstacle laying innocently in his path. He froze mid step, finger on cheek, amber eyes glued to the garment. Or should we say _undergarment_. Like a fire being stoked, the young man's face burst with color, from underneath his unbuttoned collar to where his forehead met his hairline. He actually seemed to turn a shade of red that clashed horribly with his orange hair, not that he could help it. In a whirlwind of secondhand embarrassment, he began internally debating if he should just ignore and jump over the damn thing, or pick it up and return it to the owner. He assumed she wouldn't want such a thing lying around in a house full of men. They wouldn't do anything with it, obviously, (although he wouldn't put anything past his sleazy-minded older cousin) but it seemed private, didn't it? Not that he really knew anything about that sort of thing; he'd never even seen one of these in real life before. Kagura had tried to show him once when she was feeling particularly persistent but she couldn't run as fast as he could with her shirt pulled all the way up. To say he was scarred from that experience would be a naive understatement.

Alas, his struggle was mute; even imagining himself picking it up kept him statue-like. That meant he would feel the soft fabric between his fingers. And it meant he'd have to give it to her, appearing as if he had a guilty conscience. What if she thought he had taken it on purpose? That he had stolen it and hidden it away like a weird pervert? Last time she thought he was a pervert, she'd clocked him in the head with her school bag and that was without any proof! And here he was thinking of showing up with **that** in his hands on her metaphorical bedroom doorstep. No, no, that wasn't the solution.

While he was racking his flustered brain, he had completely forgot his urge to use the restroom; in fact, it seemed as if everything in his body stopped the moment he stepped out of his room. Everything except his heart, which kept pumping a consistent amount of blood to his face and neck; he could tell this was true by how hot he felt, as if he'd been exposed to an immediate and violent case of bad sunburn. He'd even stopped breathing which would pose to be a problem. At some point a survivalist impulse kicked in and he took an abnormally deep breath of cool air into his aching lungs. He breathed in so fast he spluttered, coughed and felt like a dumbass.

Lowering his hand from his face, he let it fall by his side, his fingers twitching. Was there a chance she wouldn't assume the worst? Should he pick it up? Was he allowed to touch it if he had good intentions? Even thinking about it made him feel dirty as hell. He couldn't stand there in the hallway forever. What was preventing him from just avoiding it and leaving it there? He supposed it was the idea of someone else seeing it. That thought nettled him further.

And again, as if on cue, the door across from him opened. His eyes both thankfully and begrudgingly tore away from the floor and met the silver gaze of the person he most hated.

This person frowned at him, immediately exasperated by the eye contact. He rubbed his eye of sleep and sighed, agitation taut in his soft voice, "_What_ are you doing, you stupid ca-" His voice trailed off as his eyes flickered down to the floor, having noticed something foreign in the corner of his vision. If the first boy hadn't felt like his tongue was swollen, he would have laughed at the almost identical reaction that he had experienced play out in front of him through his cousin. He didn't even know the damn rat had that much blood in his body, he was usually so pale. But it very obviously rushed right to his face, even pinking the delicate tips of his ears. He seemed to be going through a similar mental process as previously described, though physically he had turned to stone. The cat's eyes dropped again, joining the rat's intense stare. They stood together in a weighted silence that lasted an eternity. Their feet fell asleep. Their hands went numb. And the unabashed unmentionable sat innocuously between the two.

They noticed simultaneously there was a tiny yellow bow placed in the center of the garment, nestled between the two round cups. '_That's so like her_,' they thought.

If the human body was an unlit firecracker, thoughts like this were a blowtorch.

Yuki jumped backwards, his hand over his mouth, as if he was trying to prevent the dirty thoughts from emerging from his body in any way. He slammed into the door behind him. The impact caused his knees to buckle and brought him crashing down to the ground in a heap with a bruised behind and throbbing back of the head.

Kyo also jumped back, his hands buried in his hair as if he were trying to pull the dirty thoughts from his brain. But his door hadn't closed so it didn't catch him when he lost his balance. He tumbled backwards into his room and hit the floor with a great thud. The wind was knocked out of him as he landed flat on his back.

Tohru heard the commotion and came out into the hall to see what had happened. She gasped when she saw the boys in their current state. She was about to ask questions when her own eyes met the perpetrator of this whole fiasco.

She squealed in embarrassment, scooped up her pastel pink bra off the floor and hastily ran into her room, shutting the door behind her and leaving the boys to groan in pain, shock and disgust of themselves.

A moment later, Shigure popped his head into the hallway from the staircase and saw the wreckage. "Are you boys destroying the house again? I swear that's the one thing you both have in common. Such a shame, indeed."

He left them in their anguish and the boys sighed in harmony.

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I remember in an interview, the mangaka of Furuba mentioned Tohru did all the laundry which included everyone's underwear, but it was her job so she didn't think it was weird or anything. That's essentially what sparked this idea.

I'm enjoying writing about little moments. Not sure if I'll make it a collection of ficlets so this'll stand on its own for now. Hope you enjoyed it!

Also thank you to my own dear cousin for editing and supporting my work before I even publish it!


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